


Dissolve

by bendingwind



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-29
Updated: 2010-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock suffers from an unfamiliar sensation.</p><p>For <a href="http://tardis-coral.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://tardis-coral.livejournal.com/"><b>tardis_coral</b></a> who is, to summarize (rather than fangirl rambling on as I could), absolutely fabulous. <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissolve

His chest has felt hollow for as long as he can remember, and he assumes that this is the position that ought be filled with feelings. He is quite glad that it’s empty, as he imagines it would be rather difficult to think properly with bright glowly tendrils of emotion wriggling out all the time. It is therefore with some surprise that he realizes, as he watches John smiling at a date outside the window, that something has come to rest there. It is not at all warm or fuzzy, as emotions have been described to him, and in fact makes him feel rather restless, like snakes writhing in his breast. He pushes violently away from the windowsill and begins to pace the room, feet shuffling loudly on the floor. He knocks a lamp off of a low table and dislodges a few books in his haste, but that is unimportant.

Minutes pass, and still he does not hear John’s footsteps on the stairs outside. He kicks violently at the rug, hoping to dislodge the strange tight _something_ in his chest, and finally collapses onto the couch, where he roughly reaches out to hoist his violin into playing position. He strongly suspects he is sulking as he begins playing a new song, strange and ugly and discordant. Finally, as the music is reaching a hideous squealing peak, footsteps pound up the stairs outside and the door sighs as it’s opened.

“What in God’s name are you playing on that thing?” John asks, and he is irrationally filled with one emotion that is familiar: anger.

“Nothing,” he snaps, and John shakes his head and strolls past him on his way to the bedroom, where he will sleep alone. Sherlock wonders why he finds that so very disconcerting.

“You’d better be finished by the time I get out of the shower,” John calls, out of sight.

*** 

In the following days, Sherlock finds that his eyes have an unsettling tendency to follow John wherever he goes. He knows he’s possibly missing crucial signs of terribly important things by focusing so heavily on a single person, but he cannot make himself stop.

It takes Mycroft all of a second to notice what is happening, and he sends Sherlock a less-than-subtle text.

I thought so.

Sherlock scowls darkly over the desk situated between them—John is currently poking at a plant in the corner—but doesn’t respond. It would be childish, he thinks.

Still, the texts become more regular as Mycroft tries his best to explain how Sherlock should go about seducing John, which is ridiculous, because Sherlock doesn’t want to seduce anyone. His work has always been all that he needed. He has the nagging suspicion that, for the first time in his memory, he is lying to himself.

*** 

When Sherlock stops responding to his brother’s texts, it takes less than a week for a sleek black car to drive up to the flat. A prim woman steps gracefully out, package in hand, and knocks on the door. John answers, and shortly thereafter brings the package to Sherlock. He enjoys watching the movement of John’s legs under solid trousers for a moment before the other man snaps his fingers to get his attention.

“It’s for you,” John says, proffering the package. Sherlock meets his eyes and then quickly glances away before hesitantly taking the package. “From your brother,” John adds before he walks back to the kitchen to make breakfast. Sherlock only eats toast.

He opens the package to find a book on—of all ridiculous things—romantic relationships. He opens the cover with a mild grimace of disgust and finds himself enthralled.

*** 

He pays a visit to a local store and procures the ingredients necessary for a simple meal (spaghetti, because John is fond of it, with the garlic bread sticks Sherlock likes). He cooks with mechanical precision and is fairly certain he produces a passably delicious meal.

John phones around seven, just as Sherlock is setting the table, to say he’ll be eating out tonight. Sherlock sits down and picks at a silent meal by himself and ponders on the empty-but-not-empty-like-it-was feeling sitting beside his heart. He wonders if it might be loneliness.

He leaves John’s table setting out, a quiet reprimand, but he stores the rest of the food in a neat container in the fridge, in case John is hungry when he returns home.

*** 

A month has passed since he first observed the presence of something strange in himself, and he finds that he has a strange desire to… _touch_ John. He notices that he brushes up against the man unnecessarily from time to time, intentionally reaches for things at the same instant so that their hands will touch. He is beginning to be less befuddled by these emotions (emotions, ridiculous) and more curiously enthralled. _This_ is why people do the bizarre things they insist upon doing? It’s fascinating.

Sometimes, on nights when his brain is too busy scrambling and buzzing and thinking to let him sleep, he will stand in the doorway and watch John sleep. He finds it strangely calming, and after a while his brain will fall silent and allow him to curl his ungainly limbs on the couch and fall into a deep sleep.

*** 

Time passes again, and Sherlock finds that though the desire to touch and be close to John intensifies daily, it is nothing compared to the need to simply be in his presence. He takes to lurking about the hospital where John is working—much to John’s displeasure, as he has a tendency to diagnose patients before John can get around to it—and when John isn’t near, he finds himself looking around for him, and drawn to find his colleague-or-maybe-even-friend. Being close to John is almost like breathing (though of course not at all, what’s left of his analytical brains says). Here is someone fascinating, someone who doesn’t hate that he unravels everything they do and say, someone he almost but doesn’t quite understand.

More importantly, John is someone he never wants to completely understand.

There is a peace about John, an acceptance, and somehow it stills Sherlock’s mind a little and gives him a few moments to breathe. The need to know… it doesn’t disappear, but it becomes secondary to simply _being._

Sherlock always thought he would be miserable without constant surveillance and study and thought and analysis. It’s like floating on clouds, and he loves it.

Perhaps he loves John.

*** 

He successfully makes dinner for John twice (though instinct, fortunately, warns him that candlelight might not be… well received) and learns to buy him presents. Ambiguous things, like books, a new pair of shoes that he explains with the statement that John’s shoes squeak and it irritates him. It is a delicate dance, courting John without letting on to it, and Sherlock thrives on the game.

*** 

Months pass and John is brave and brilliant and (mostly) always by his side… and mere glancing touches are simply not enough anymore. He finds himself hovering close, far too close… and he notices that John never moves away. It gives him hope, as does the small but bright smile John gives him when he buys the man a watch.

He hopes John finally understands as he carefully presses him against the wall, leans forward, and places a soft but hardly chaste kiss on the other man’s lips. John turns his head and stares blankly at the wall, and Sherlock realizes he’s done something wrong and backs away.

“What—?” he begins to ask, but John walks away before he can complete his question.

*** 

His muscles feel tight and it’s as though he is vibrating in his own skin. John hasn’t been home for a week, and Sherlock knows he’s staying in a hotel on Euston Road and he’s at least likely eating because he’s been ordering takeout twice a day. He also knows that no women have stopped by, which is both a relief and a nightmare, because it tells him _nothing._ A great, resounding, echoing, horrible nothing. There is nothing to deduce, nothing to study or analyze, just paralyzing, painful thought and worry and fear. His fingers hover over the keys of his phone a thousand times and he can never type the letters. The slight scuffs on his phone from where he’s set it down roughly give him away.

He lies on the couch, facing the door, and refuses cases because he might have to leave the flat.

*** 

Another week passes, and Sherlock is beginning to lose hope. Such a funny emotion, hope—so beautiful and so dreadful at the same time. He rather hates it.

He’s sitting there, in the dark, when footsteps shuffle up the stairs and the door opens with a whisper and closes with a click. John doesn’t turn the lights on.

“You didn’t lock the door,” Sherlock breathes.

“I suppose I didn’t,” that familiar matter-of-fact voice replies, and there is the faint sound of shuffling and another click as the door is locked.

“You disappeared.”

“You kissed me,” John says flatly.

“Yes. And then you disappeared.”

“Don’t be daft; you knew exactly where I was. You probably even knew what I was eating for dinner on Thursday.” Sherlock looks away from the source of the voice, and slowly reaches up to pull the chain on the lamp beside him. He needs to see. He needs more clues, more context, more evidence to tell him exactly what John is thinking.

John is standing there, in one of his many hideous jumpers, looking so perfectly normal that for a moment Sherlock has the mad desire to chuck the lamp at him. He doesn’t, obviously.

“You look like shit,” John informs him succinctly.

“Yes, well,” Sherlock replies, unwilling to answer properly. Of course he looks dreadful, he’s been sitting here for two weeks. He thinks he probably ate something the day before yesterday and he definitely got up to check his email earlier, but that’s hardly enough to be going on.

John shuffles over with a sigh and carefully brushes his eyelids down. Sherlock fights the desire to lean into his hand, because—even though he should know, should be _sure_ already—he isn’t certain what John has decided.

“Go to sleep,” John says wearily, “I’ll get you a blanket.” Sherlock hasn’t slept properly in two weeks, so he does as he is ordered.

*** 

He wakes to the sound of someone moving in the kitchen, and a crashing wave of what he has come to understand as relief washes over him. John hasn’t left him, not yet. He scrambles off the couch and into the other room, more hungry than he can remember being. As he reaches for the bread to make toast, John lays a hand across his.

* * *

  



End file.
